Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official eBook

was told in a dream, or by a priest, that it would
continue so till he should consent to sacrifice his
own daughter, then a girl, and the young lad to whom
she was affianced, to the tutelary god of the place.
He accordingly built a little shrine in the centre
of the valley, which was to become the bed of the
lake, put the two children in, and built up the doorway.
He had no sooner done so than the whole of the valley
became filled with water, and the old merchant, the
priest, the masons, and spectators, made their escape
with much difficulty. From that time the lake
has been inexhaustible; but no living soul of the
Banjara caste has ever since been known to drink of
its waters. Certainly all of that caste at present
religiously avoid drinking the water of the lake;
and the old people of the city say that they have
always done so since they can remember, and that they
used to hear from their parents that they had always
done so. In nothing does the Founder of the Christian
religion appear more amiable than in His injunction,
’Suffer little children to come unto me, and
forbid them not’. In nothing do the Hindoo
deities appear more horrible than in the delight they
are supposed to take in their sacrifice—­it
is everywhere the helpless, the female, and the infant
that they seek to devour—­and so it was
among the Phoenicians and their Carthaginian colonies.
Human sacrifices were certainly offered in the cities
of Sagar during the whole of the Maratha government
up to the year 1800, when they were put a stop to
by the local governor, Asa Sahib, a very humane man;
and I once heard a very learned Brahman priest say
that he thought the decline of his family and government
arose from this innovation. ‘There
is’, said he, ’no sin in not offering
human sacrifices to the gods where none have been
offered; but, where the gods have been accustomed
to them, they are naturally annoyed when the rite
is abolished, and visit the place and people with all
kinds of calamities.’ He did not seem to
think that there was anything singular in this mode
of reasoning, and perhaps three Brahman priests out
of four would have reasoned in the same manner.[3]

On descending into the valley of the Nerbudda over
the Vindhya range of hills from Bhopal, one may see
by the side of the road, upon a spur of the hill,
a singular pillar of sandstone rising in two spires,
one turning above and rising over the other, to the
height of from twenty to thirty feet. On a spur
of a hill half a mile distant is another sandstone
pillar not quite so high. The tradition is that
the smaller pillar was the affianced bride of the taller
one, who was a youth of a family of great eminence
in these parts. Coming with his uncle to pay
his first visit to his bride in the procession they
call the ‘barat’, he grew more and more
impatient as he approached nearer and nearer, and
she shared the feeling. At last, unable to restrain
himself, he jumped upon his uncle’s shoulder,